Are you ever overwhelmed by the sudden, irrational fear of falling over the edge of a high place? And yet also overcome by the equally strong, lurching compulsion to throw yourself over the edge? I know I’m not the only one, and if you nodded yes, then know— it isn’t just the two of us, either. It’s a phenomenon, a quirk of human nature.
What’s interesting is, in a way, I feel that my entire experience of Russia can be summarised by that sensation: fear mixed with compulsive fascination. I jump away from the edge of the bridge overlooking the dirty, frozen river, heart racing, and yet...I was the one who chose to get that close, nobody put me on the edge over looking the ice but myself. It’s a sickening thrill.
Once I’ve crossed this dirty river, I hope I won’t ever have to get back on this particular bridge again. It hasn't been all bad, there have been moments of joy, and deep fulfillment--but I haven't enjoyed my time here in St. Petersburg.
I read somewhere, or maybe somebody told me, that this fear of falling and this fascination with jumping is like a little shudder of excitement as we experience freedom. More specifically, free will. We have the power to step up to the edge of the high place, and if we choose, step off it. The closer we get, the more we feel someone is going to push us over the edge. The fact is, nothing will force us to fall, or prevent us from jumping. We are free to choose. And, as I stand with my toes gripping the stone of the bridge through the soles of my boots, legs shaking as I teeter on the edge, I feel the thrill of terror that is what it feels like to be free.
When I begin to feel that I’m trapped here in this city of canals, I go out and find a bridge, and stand on the edge. I chose this.
As I sit here writing this entry, this is what I see. When I was away for a couple weeks, there was some flooding in my flat, and the floors were ruined. For the first week, the landlord told me to keep the windows open to help the wood continue drying, and to "be careful during the night when you walk in the kitchen" because of the sharp ridges of the warped floorboards sticking up all over the place, and gaps in the floor where some of the boards had already been removed. It began to look a bit like an abandoned building, and I would come back from my classes to find a couple more floorboards had been removed each day. Eventually, my landlord said he was concerned for my health, and decided that we should replace the floor sooner rather than later. So, here I am, sitting at my kitchen table in an old, worn out pair of Nikes to protect my feet from the exposed cement and wood splinters. In a way, if it weren't so dirty and musty-smelling, it could be rather chic...
Why must the simple things be so much more difficult here? Why do even the smallest of pleasures, like good coffee, fresh vegetables, and friendly strangers, seem so impossible to come by? The fact of the matter is, I've put up with St. Petersburg and with the conservatory for nearly four years now, and I've found a way to live with it all. But I'm tired of it, and ready for this chapter to be over. I try to put a bold face on, strive to find the bright side of things, and appreciate this journey for everything I've learned. And I do, I really do. On the other hand, I also value honesty.
I created this blog to share photos and stories from my life in Russia, knowing that I would be far from the people I loved, and knowing that, whatever the outcome, it would be an adventure I would want to share without whomever was interested in coming along for the ride. I haven't written an entry about Russia in over a year. While the reasons are many, and I would be lying if I said that laziness wasn't one of them, a big part of my silence has been for a different reason.
I didn't want this blog to become a place where I came to complain. I wanted it to be a place where I could share and celebrate the new discoveries I would be making in this new country, and, hopefully, inspire people. I didn't want people to read my stories and come away feeling sorry for me, or sad.
If I couldn't show things in an uplifting way, if I couldn't make people smile or inspire them, then, I told myself, it simply meant I wasn't ready to write about those things yet. "If you can't say somethin' nice," Thumper the rabbit intoned, rolling his eyes, "Don't say nothin' at all..."
The best-selling essayist and humourist, David Sedaris, once said in an interview that if you're struggling to write about something, set it aside for a while, come back to it after some time has passed. I'm paraphrasing, but he said something akin to, "You may not have enough distance from the subject yet, to be able to write about it. When you have enough distance, you'll know how to tell the story, it'll come together."
No matter what struggle I was grappling with, I always tried to end each entry on a positive note, or find some new personal insight in the midst of the dilemma. Since the end of 2016, those positive notes been harder to hear amongst the din. I still believe what I believed in the beginning, about the purpose and tone of my blog. However, in the interest of honesty, I won't lie to you, Reader. Every day here is a struggle, and I'm tired.
Until I have put enough distance between myself and this place, I may have to settle for less-than-perfect stories with less-than-inspiring endings. I may have to settle for silence, when the story is too hard to put into words, as are the emotions that accompany it. I may have to settle for a little bit of both. I may, sometimes, have to settle for a dusty, musty, concrete floor; for classes I don't like, and didn't choose, but which I am not allowed to drop. I may have to settle for teachers that yell insults at me, and make me yell back, and in the process become a person I don't think I truly am or want to be--aggressive, cold, hard.
Do you remember being little and getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and then having to face the dark corridor back to your bedroom? Standing in your pajamas on the cold tile floor, a shiver would go up your spine as you faced the inevitable, waiting for somebody to make you do what you yourself couldn't force yourself to. When the ticking clock and the fear of the creatures lurking in every shadow had finally robbed you of the last breath of warmth left in your skin, you would do what you thought you couldn't do. You would step onto the threshold, and then--bolt! A streak of blue flannel pajamas along the corridor; a wild flapping of arms as you rounded the corner at top speed; then, the flash of a bare heel disappearing into your bedroom as you slammed the door behind you, and launched yourself to safety, into the still-warm eiderdown. Huddled in the bed clothes, with only a scrap of your face bare to the cool air coming in through the open window, you'd lie there, tiny body pumping full of adrenaline at your narrow escape and full of a drunken giddiness at the magnificence of your own courage.
Of course you remember it. It is the very essence of childhood--dodging the invisible hallway Jabberwock, "the jaws that bite, the claws that catch". My question is, what gave you the nerve to make the run? Was it the reassuring, soft snores of your parents coming from the room across from yours? Was it pride, unwilling to admit that a big girl or an nearly-grown man of seven was afraid of the dark? Was it the wanting to be back in your warm bed that grew stronger even than the fear, a churlishness born of exhaustion that became a form of bravery? Or was it that, as you stood there, curling your toes over the door's wooden threshold like a diver, you knew it was the only thing to be done? There was no thought. There was no plan. There was only knowing that you were here, and you wanted to be there, and you didn't want to face the space in between. But face it you must.
When the knowing you must grew stronger than the fear you couldn't make it, that was when you gritted your teeth and hurled yourself forward, onward, onward blindly through the dark with only the softest glimmer of a nightlight in the distance to guide you back to your sanctuary.
I turn to face the last 14 months remaining of what will have been five grueling years of study here in St. Petersburg, and I wonder how I'll get through them. Then I think to myself, "You must, and so, somehow, you will."
